Fading into Whole
by rachelandjuliaBWSC
Summary: If you need to crash, then crash and burn... you're not alone.


Disclaimer: _They are not ours, Not ours we say. We just like to use them, On cold wet, wet days._

_Here it is written, Thing One and Thing Two, Are Chris Carter's creations, And that makes us blue._

We do not own Dr. Seuss either.

Spoilers: Surprisingly, none.

A/N: We wrote this all over facebook messaging. We're just that good. Rachel is dedicating this to Julia and Julia is dedicating it to Rachel. Listen to Skillet's _Comatose_ CD while you read. If you don't have it, get on playlist and listen to _Falling Inside the_ _Black, Comatose, Whispers, Those Nights_, and especially _Last Night._ No really, do it. It will make the experience so much better.

* * *

Mulder opened the door to the hotel room and flipped on the light. It had been a particularly long day, starting at 4 am, when Scully woke him up to let him know that that there had been another murder overnight. She'd left him with the sheriff to do an autopsy at 6, and they hadn't spoken since. It was only within the last half hour that he had felt satisfied that a full day's work had been put in.

It was just past 11.

He looked around the room and sat that the bathroom door was slightly ajar.

"Scully?"

"In here."

"Are you primping or can I come in?"

She chuckled.

"You can come in."

She was sitting on the side of the tub, soaking her feet in mint scented water.

"You are primping."

"Pampering," she corrected.

"No bubble bath?"

"Too lazy."

He smiled and sat down on the closed toilet.

"I feel like I haven't seen you in about 100 years. How'd you do today?"

"I can't even think of an illustration to fully describe what I've been through."

"Was the M.E. just as charming today as he was yesterday?"

"Even more so. He not only thinks that I am his personal assistant, he refused to run most of the tests I asked for. He claims that there is a physical characteristic for every blood ailment, and we could find it if we just looked hard enough."

"So what'd you do?"

"I ran the tests behind his back and asked him how he graduated from med school with such a limited knowledge of the human body. He took a pretty long lunch break."

"You make me prouder and prouder every day."

They were quiet for a while and she finally leaned over to drain the tub.

"I hope you fared better than I did," she commented, drying her feet off, then walking out of the bathroom and to the bed.

"The sheriff is the most uncooperative man I have ever met in my life, and I am including me and Kersh in that count. I don't know why they brought us all the way out here if they're not going to listen to anything we say."

"Maybe we should just get out of here."

"Ditch an assignment? Scully..."

"I know, I know, I make your heart sing. So what should we do?"

"I don't know. They're staking out a suspect right now, but I really don't think that's going to get them anywhere. They're not giving me much room to lead the investigation either. I think they just wanted federal funding for this."

"Probably."

"I think all we can do is sit back and wait. I hate being stuck like this."

"Me too. Maybe we should at least call Skinner and tell him what's going on. He might side with us and hand the whole thing over to the local field office. Why it didn't go to them in the first place, I'll never know."

"I'll call him first thing in the morning."

She sat down on the bed and turned the TV on while he shed his suit jacket, shirt and pants, leaving him in an undershirt and boxers.

"Anything on?" he asked as she channel surfed.

"_Perry Mason_ on one channel, _Murder She Wrote_ on another, and _Matlock_ on another."

"Gee, with a line up like that, how could you go wrong?"

"Well, I'm not to the movie channels yet, so hold on to your hat."

"Why don't you give me the remote? I click faster than you."

"No, I'm quite capable of doing this myself."

"Please, Scully?"

"No."

"Give me the remote," he whined, plopping down next to her. She moved the remote to her right hand so it was farther away from him. He lunged for it, and a mini-wrestling match ensued.

"Mulder, I swear, I could totally take you."

"Bring it."

"I am busy protecting the remote."

"Chicken."

"Go away."

He chuckled as he grabbed her arms and tried to wrestle the remote from her hands.

"Scully, give me that."

"No way. You'll make me watch South Park."

"I won't make you watch it as long as you do your Cartman voice for me."

"I'm not doing the voice and I am not giving you the remote. I don't trust your channel surfing skills."

"We can pick together, but I would like to hold the remote."

"Mulder, you're heavy and you're laying on me. If I could move, I might consider letting you have it."

"Is that a guarantee?"

"I might consider it, I said. But I probably won't change my mind."

"I just can't win with you, can I?"

"Maybe if you had better taste in entertainment we could strike a deal. As it stands, I just cannot subject myself to the endless litany of "Whose my baby daddy?" that you made me watch last night."

"You would watch Lifetime Movies all day if-"

His voice trailed off as his fingers lightly grazed the skin on her wrists, the light hash marks on her skin visible only in the fluorescent light of the hotel room.  
'He can't possibly see that.' she assured herself, biting back the panic. But she could trust Mulder with this, couldn't she?  
"Scully..."  
She sighed as he moved over next to her, holding her arm in his hand.  
"Mulder... it was a long time ago. I was just a kid, I haven't done it since I was 16."  
She sighed, biting the inside of her lip as his fingers traced over her other arm, inspecting it for scars.

"Why haven't I noticed them before?"

"Mulder, you can hardly see them now. It's because we're under the light. Otherwise they're practically invisible."

"Why'd you do it?" he asked, his eyes finally meeting hers. Leave it to Mulder to be blunt.

"I don't know. There was just a lot going on in my life back then. I don't understand the psychology of it. I had friends that did it, it was a form of control; there are probably many reasons."

"You did it a lot," he noted, subconsciously counting the small, faint scars.

"Yeah, I did. It was an addiction. I was lucky that I was able to stop cold turkey, but I did think about it a lot afterwards."

"What made you stop?"

"People started suspecting something. It got hard to hide. I was too proud to admit what I was doing, so I stopped. Pride goeth before the fall, but I guess in this case it came after."

"Why haven't you told me before?"

"It's not something I just bring up in conversation, Mulder. I rarely even think about it myself."

"What happened? I mean, what was so bad in your life, Scully?"

She shook her head and pulled her arms away from him.

"You don't think bad things happened?"

"No, I just want to know what they were. I want to understand this."

Her gaze fell to the bedspread. She was suddenly riveted to the stitch work on the scratchy blanket and she began to trace it with her finger.

"Mom and dad had split up. They were fighting all the time so dad just packed up and left. We didn't see him for a year. Missy was gone all the time, so I couldn't talk to her. My friends didn't understand and my boyfriend... yeah, he was a real winner. I just had nobody. But this... I would do it and it was like a weight was lifted. I had control. I had a way to deal with it. It wasn't until later that I understood that I wasn't dealing with anything at all. I was faking life."

He pulled her in for a hug.

"I'm sorry Scully. So sorry."

"Don't be. Don't take the guilt like you always do, and don't pity me. Please."

"I don't want you to ever have to feel alone. I don't want your heart to break anymore."

"I'm okay now, Mulder. I am. I'm more able to deal with things because of this."

"I don't want you to be broken," he whispered, his head bowing and his voice strained.

"I'm whole, Mulder. They're healed and so am I. They don't hurt anymore."  
"Really?"  
"Touch them."  
"Why?"  
"I need you to. I need you to see that they're okay."  
He reached his hand out and gently touched her wrists, his fingers gliding over the white lines. If he closed his eyes he could imagine that he was simply touching her flawless skin.  
His eyes opened and met hers, matching her single tear for single tear.  
"See? It's okay."  
He nodded, then leaned down and placed a kiss on each of her wrists.  
"I wish I could take that away. That pain and loneliness."  
"Don't say that. Life is 10 percent what happens to you and 90 percent what you do about it. Who you turn out to be depends on that 90 percent. I wouldn't be me without it. I wouldn't have the strength to do this job without it. Yes, it was a horrible time, and I wish I could have learned those things another way, but the fact of the matter is that I didn't. I've accepted that. I've moved on and I'm okay. Alright?"

He nodded and she quickly wiped the tears off of his cheeks.

"Now, enough of that. It's getting late and we have a job to do in the morning. We should get some sleep."

He studied her for a long minute, his eyes taking in every facet of her expression.

"Stop psychoanalyzing me."

He smiled a little, but continued his observations.

"Mulder I'm fine. Don't put me on suicide watch."  
"You know, you say 'I'm fine' a lot."  
"Mulder..."  
"Just sleep. I'll be in the chair."

He stood from the bed and stretched, grabbing a pillow. She raised an eyebrow at him. This was so out of character.

"You really are clueless, aren't you?"  
"What?"  
"Not important. Night."  
"Scully, tell me."  
"It's just... don't sleep in the chair, okay?"

"Where do you suggest? The tub? The floor?"

"Mulder get in the bed."

"Scully."  
"Get in the bed."  
"Yes ma'am."

She turned the TV off and settled down on her side of the bed, facing him. He stretched out on his back, staring at the ceiling. She knew what he was doing. He was going to obsess over this until he made himself crazy. It wasn't that she kept things from him on purpose. It was just that everything that befell her in life, whether it be cancer or overdraft fees, he took as his personal cross. And he bore it constantly.

He looked over at her, their eyes meeting in an intense gaze, the likes of which she had only shared with him twice before.

"Scully, are you sure you want me here?"  
"It's a huge bed, Mulder. There's like, 17 feet between us. Besides if you sleep in the chair you'll be sore all day tomorrow, which will make me feel bad, and then you'll complain about it which will drive me insane. It's better for both of us if you just sleep here."  
"Alright."

He glanced over at her, then returned his attention to the ceiling.

"You know, Bill knows..." Scully whispered softly in to the dark room.  
"Really?"

Scully felt Mulder shift, turning on his side to face her. She sighed. It was too late to turn back, no putting her walls up.  
"Yeah..." she spit out, swallowing hard.  
"How'd he find out?" Mulder asked.

He wanted to reach over and take her hand, but she needed to get this out.  
"I was supposed to have the house to myself. Melissa and Charlie were at a friend's house, Mom was working a temp desk job. Bill was at Annapolis. I didn't expect him home." Scully explained, "Anyway, he found out and he went ballistic. Kept telling me I was so selfish. I swear I wanted to hit him; he didn't understand."  
"Scully..." Mulder whispered. He lifted his hand but set it back on the bed.  
"Anyway," she shook her head, "I never told anyone else after that, I just quit. He was right. I was being selfish, I wasn't intending to kill myself, I really wasn't. If something had happened though, I couldn't put that on my mom."  
"Scully, you were sixteen. It's okay to be selfish at sixteen." Mulder promised her.  
"Not in my family Mulder. If anyone else had found out, I would've been this huge disappointment." Scully batted away the tears.  
"That's why Bill didn't want you working with me?" Mulder asked as he linked two and two together.  
"He didn't want me to slide back."  
He was quiet, but she knew him too well to think that he wasn't still mulling it over.  
"What do you want to ask me?"  
"Is it really over?"  
"Yes, it is."  
"Because after the things you have been through, the things we've seen-"  
"Mulder, it's okay. I'm not going to do it again. I'm not as alone as I used to be. I deal with things differently. And I have you. You'd know if something was going on."  
"I hope I would."  
"You would. You may not know what it was, but you would know if something was off. I am surer of that than I am of anything."  
"Shaky ground you live on."  
"You think you don't know me?"  
"I think I am too self-absorbed to pay attention."  
"Admitting it is the first step."

He smiled and reached his hand out for her.

"Scully..."

"Yes?"

"Come over here."

She grinned and scooted over to his side of the bed and he wrapped his arms around her tightly.

"Now you're getting it."

"What?"

"This is what I needed. Thank you."

"No problem."

He rubbed her back in small circles, the way he always did when she opened up to him like this. It was rare but familiar, and she relaxed into the security she felt.

"Scully?"

"Hmm?"

"Is this going to be one of those things we never talk about again?"

She was quiet as she thought about it. It had been much easier to tell him all of this than she had thought it would be. And she felt a little relief, like a niche had been carved in the wall she had built, and she was finally letting him in.

"It doesn't have to be. I'd like to be able to talk to you about it. But I don't want it to become a big deal, or something that defines our friendship. I don't want things to change because you know this about me. I'm still the same person I was half an hour ago."

"I know. And I'm not going to treat you differently or think of you differently, because you're no different."

"What?" she asked with a slight chuckle.

"You know what I mean. I still love you just as much. I still respect you just as much. Nothing could ever change that."

"All those times you've said that to me, I've never really believed it until just now."

"Why not?" he asked, tucking a stand of hair behind her ear.

"Because. There was always this thing that you didn't know. I felt like you'd be mad at me for keeping it from you, or that you would start walking on eggshells around me. I didn't know that telling you would actually come this easy."

"That was easy?"

"Relatively. There were a lot of things that were harder to tell you than that was."

He nodded and let his lips rest on her forehead.

"Thank you for letting me in, Scully."

"Thank you for listening."

"Always."

_This is the last night you'll spend alone  
Look me in the eyes so I know you know  
I'm everywhere you want me to be  
The last night you'll spend alone  
I'll wrap you in my arms and I won't let go  
I'm everything you need me to be_

_The night is so long when everything's wrong  
If you give me your hand  
I will help you hold on  
Tonight, tonight_

_I won't let you say goodbye  
And I'll be your reason why  
The last night away from me  
Away from me_


End file.
